Israel Matzav: Shut off the gas pumps to Iran

Shut off the gas pumps to Iran

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz make the case for shutting off the gas pumps in Iran.

But let's be honest: Gasoline and insurance sanctions are just about all we've really got left in the quiver. The Guard Corps elite, who oversee Iran's nuclear program, are too well protected to be seriously hurt by financial and industrial sanctions. Targeted sanctions have increased the cost of Iranians doing business, but there is little evidence to suggest that sanctions so far have ever moderated the behavior of Iran's rulers.

The administration's "smart-sanctions" approach perpetuates a myth about Iran's politics that has crippled our analysis for years. Mr. Khamenei isn't an economic rationalist. He wasn't waiting for George W. Bush to depart to make peace with the United States. Men who talk about crushing the "enemies of God" won't give up their enriched uranium because transaction costs have increased. The acquisition of the bomb is now probably inseparable from the ruling elite's religious identity.

For sanctions to be a game changer, they have to be crushing. Mr. Khamenei's commitment to developing nukes is probably as strong as was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's determination to destroy Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. The shock that stopped Khomeini—the realization that the conflict was threatening his regime's survival—ought to tell us what kind of shock we need now. Sanctions must complement the only thing that has so far rattled the regime: the pro-democracy Green Movement.

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Gasoline and insurance sanctions tied to the cause of democracy might—just possibly—work. Foreign investment in Iran is rapidly declining. Even without refined-petroleum sanctions, foreign energy companies are reducing their investments and some are leaving the country. Munich Re and Allianz, two giant German insurance and reinsurance companies, recently announced they are terminating their Iranian business ties. Lloyd's of London, the world's leading specialist insurance market, promised to do the same once refined petroleum sanctions legislation is enacted.

The threat of gasoline sanctions also has persuaded BP, Reliance Industries and Glencore—all with deep, longstanding ties to Iran—to terminate direct gasoline sales. Siemens, the giant German industrial concern that was implicated in transferring telecommunication surveillance equipment to Tehran, has closed its headquarters in Iran.

More crucially, Mr. Ahmadinejad has badly mismanaged the economy, and the Iranian people know it. Refined-petroleum sanctions would rock an already shaky system. Iranians who are fed up with theocracy are certainly not going to embrace it if Mr. Obama declares gasoline sanctions the midwife of representative government. The regime has been blaming Washington for almost all of its failures since the revolution. Americans have become more popular in Iran precisely because the regime damns the U.S.

I don't believe that sanctions alone are going to stop Iran - even sanctions on gasoline and insurance - without at least a credible military threat behind them. Even with a military threat, I question whether at this point Iran can be stopped without military action. It can't hurt to try, so long as trying doesn't mean precluding a military option for some period of time. But the longer we dither on trying, the more likely it is that military action becomes (if it isn't already) the only solution.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: Shut off the gas pumps to Iran